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Queensland prisoners take-up online study

CHRIS UHLMANN: Queensland's Liberal National Government has been unashamedly "tough on crime", increasing sentences, and restricting bail provisions for many offences.

And as the number of people behind bars climbs, the Government is spending tens of million dollars expanding its prisons, and an extra $360 million recruiting more police.

But as Queensland splashes out to cut crime, the developers of a small, federally-funded education program hope to have an even bigger effect at a much lower price.

Eric Tlozek reports.

ERIC TLOZEK: There's no internet behind the razor wire in the high-security Southern Queensland Correctional Centre west of Brisbane.

But here, a small number of prisoners have been studying online anyway.

(Sound of typing, mouse click).

ERIC TLOZEK: The University of Southern Queensland has developed a way for these inmates to study its online courses, at a time when Australian universities are increasing delivering their education via the internet.

HELEN FARLEY: It's about taking digital learning to correctional centres, because they don't have any internet access whatsoever. Or the prisoners don't have access to the internet. And so all of our online education of course is delivered via the internet so we've got to find another way to do that.

ERIC TLOZEK: Dr Helen Farley from the University's Digital Futures Institute has been working on a small pilot program that's now being expanded across Queensland.

HELEN FARLEY: Well it gives them the digital literacy skills that they'll need to find work after they are released or to do further study. And if we can give them a post-secondary qualification it actually reduces recidivism by 40 per cent.

ERIC TLOZEK: The prison's head of offender education, Malcolm Wake, says the system keeps inmates abreast of technological change.

MALCOLM WAKE: We've had prisoners that come in here and we show them email for the first time, they think we've just planned it all out, we've made it up, they've never seen it before.

So all of a sudden you expose them to these tools and you show how they can be used in a more positive way and you reinforce the fact that this is how it's done in society, it helps them get their head around literally how they're going to work when they get out.

ERIC TLOZEK: The number of people on remand or in jail in Queensland rose by 16 per cent over the last year, and the state's now spending $61 million expanding its jails.

Expanding this education program will cost just $4.3 million - from a Commonwealth, not a state government grant - and will allow about 1,000 inmates in 13 prisons to access online education over three years.

Helen Farley says that's a small investment to maintain access to education for prisoners.

HELEN FARLEY: No-one else is doing this. No other university in Australia can offer this kind of digital education to incarcerated students. And in fact, more and more universities are moving away from offering any sort of education to incarcerated students, just because it's too difficult and too time-consuming to do.

MALCOLM WAKE: If we keep doing this the old-fashioned way, when these guys walk out of here, they're going to be so far behind, they'll give up very quickly; they'll have no idea how to engage in their workplace and they'll effectively turn back to the path they were before.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The head of Offender Education at the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre, Malcolm Wake, ending that report by Eric Tlozek.

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